FISH TANK: not so happy in the projects

FISH TANK is the story of Mia, a foul mouthed, tough 15 year old girl who lives in the projects in Essex with her drunk mother and equally fouled mouth little sister. Mia has no friends, and loves to dance. She spends her days trying to get booze and waiting to get sent off to some sort of correctional boarding school. Then her mother begins dating Connor, a friendly good looking Irish man, who plants himself into the family and gives all three females the sort of dependable male attention they have never known. He is able to bring out a nicer side of Mia, who still jumps back to her angry self and often snipes that she can't stand him, despite it being clear she is crazy about him. Unfortunatly things take a steer to the innappropriat and Connor ends up having sex with Mia on her sofa while her mother is passed out drunk and her sister spies on them. The morning after Connor breaks up with Mia's mother and leaves. Mia tracks him down, discovering secrets he was keeping and ends up creating a situation that turns more serious then she could forsee.
FISH TANK is a solid movie, directed by Andrea Arnold, who also directed RED ROAD and whose third film WUTHERING HEIGHTS is in production now.  She is a director to watch for.  The performances in FISH TANK  are seamless, seeming like you are watching people who really live the lives you are watching. First time actress Katie Jarvis was found in the projects arguing with her boyfriend and offered the role, and she is phenomanel. She captures Mia'a crippling loneliness masked in  anger and makes you root for her despite her foul nature. Also brilliant is Michael Fassbender, who is my current male actor obsession, as Connor. It can't be easy to play a man who befriends and then sleeps with a young girl desperate for companionship, but Fassbender manages to give Connor enough layers to keep from being a straight up creep. In no way am I saying the movie makes him sympathetic, but he makes Connor interesting.
In FISH TANK, Mia's only passion is for dance. She escapes to an empty apartment to play rap music on her tape player and dance, a sort of street style, more male in style then feminine. The scenes of her dancing are good, and the music even better. In fact, this movie has great music. From the rap to the reggae that her mother always has on, to Bobby Womack, whom Connor plays for Mia and that she later dances to for him.
The movie has very few scenes of happiness, the world these characters live in is harsh, the people are mean and the scenery is stark. In the first few minutes Mia breaks a girls nose and barley escapes being raped by a couple of teenage boys. Still, I think the movie is about Mia's humanity and how it survives despite how angry she is and how hurt by others she is. Her need to save a white horse, kept tied up in a junkyard, shows she has compassion, even if she often hides it from people. At the end of the movie, as Mia heads out into the world, she looks back, watching her little sister, and smiles. Her future is not promising, but she is resigned to escaping the projects, the trap of poverty, if she can. Weather or not she will be able to succeed in the world is unsure, but at 15 she has more strength then most of the adults in her world.

THE WHISTLEBLOWER: men behaving badly, females suffering.

THE WHISTLEBLOWER is disturbing, violent, and sad.  Based on the experiences of real life heroin Kathryn Bolkovac, played by Rachel Weisz, the true-life thriller presents many different problems with a very complicated system. It is the story of Bolkovac, an american cop who goes to Bosnia to be a peacekeeper after the war. She works for a privet company called Democra, funded by of the U.N, and whose workers have legal immunity in Bosnia. Bolkovac quickly impresses and is promoted to department head of domestic affairs. Soon she is called to a case of two young women, badly beaten, who have escaped a bar where they were being forced to work as prostitutes. As soon as Bolkovac looks into bar she finds evidence that many United Nation employees not only raping the girls, but many are profiting and even involved in trafficking the girls across the border. As Bolkovac begins to put together files on all the victims the corruption proves to run deep, and not only is she unable to protect the girls who have escaped from being taken back to the bar, she watches as her files are all closed with no action being taken and every door is closed in her face. 

First time director Larysa Kondracki makes a very straight forward film. The tones are grey, the music is subtle, not over dramatic, and the script is straight forward. No part of this movie is sentimental and it works best when following Bolkovac's trying to get these girls help, and weakens during scenes of her personal life, which are few. Most surprising to me, THE WHISTLEBLOWER is also strong when introducing and following, Raya, the girl whom Bolkovac tries to save through the entire film.  It opens with a scene of Raya and her friend in Sarajevo, who are tricked into thinking they are about to leave for a job at a hotel, by a man they know trust. As we watch them get their passport pictures taken in his apartment, we know good things are not ahead of them, but they are happy and excited to go on an adventure, clueless to the evil greed at work. Later, when the girls are shown again, months later and following horrific abuse, their appearance is shocking. Kudos to the costume and makeup department for creating such authentic looks for all the girls in the film. 

While this film has scenes that are very very hard to watch, I applaud it for showing the most unflinching portrait of the awful conditions these girls are put through. It does not glamorize anything, which might seem a strange word to use for sex slavery, but most films about this subject matter tend to clean it up. Since the girls are used for sex, it seems hard for filmmakers to keep it from being completely unsexy, by making the girls look pretty or the beds they are on clean. Another thing movies with this subject matter tend to do is go out of their way to prove the "goodness" or "innocence" of the victims, as if we need proof of how undeserving they are. To explain what I mean I will use 2007's TRADE  as an example: TRADE is the story of a two females kidnapped by a gang to be sold into slavery. They are, 13 year old Adriana and Veronica, a Polish women in her twenties. The two of them become close as they are taken from Mexico city, into America and on a tour across the country where they stop at different places for men, who know about them from an internet site, rape them. Almost every scene of the girls does something to prove show their goodness. After being raped Adriana fears her mother will not love her any longer, because she is dirty now. In several scenes she breaks down in tears crying that she is dirty and unlovable now. Her biggest fear, despite the constant threat death and violence, is that her not being a virgin makes her bad. Veronica, on the other hand, is the "strong one" she fights off the men as long as she can, she tries her hardest to protect Adriana by offering herself and eventually kills herself by jumping off a cliff instead of taking a beating from her kidnapper. The image of her jumping off is done in slow motion, her long beautiful hair flying behind her as she jumps. The strangest aspect to her death, to me, is that the man is then shown to to have remorse for her death. The same man who has been beating and raping these girls as he prepares to sell them to the highest bidder, changes his entire violent nature seeing Veronica kill herself. He even later helps the younger girl escape, saying he feels awful about the death of Veronica. I guess we are to believe that in death Veronica's goodness changed him.  

I could go on and on about how bad TRADE is, but I will stop. The point I am trying to make is that it is unnecessary to make these characters so pure, so good, it simply makes them one dimensional and less real. Human trafficking is awful, girls being kidnapped, tortured and raped is awful. I am confused by the need to show how good the victims are, that isn't the point. The point is that what is being done to them is evil and the only way to show it is dirty and real. 

I very much appreciated WHISTLEBLOWER's depictions of the enslaved girls, because it's straight forward, there are no touching monologs between victims or scenes of them crying over their purity being taken. These girls are simply terrified, and they want to survive, but are powerless to the men who abuse them. these men are the one's with choices, and they choose to profit off suffering.

The two things that stuck with me after this film, were the horror depicted in certain scenes, and the absolutely amazing performance given by Rachel Weisz. I have always been a fan of hers, despite THE MUMMY, and I would love to see her get a nomination next year for Best Actress. 

I also spent a lot of time researching the real Kathryn Bolkovac after watching the movie. She is a hero and the fact that so little has been done to any of the people involved in this scandal is beyond disturbing. The WHISTLEBLOWER shows one women trying to do what is right, against a powerful establishment full f people abusing their power and getting away with it. 

Where are all the female directors?

I read today that less then 1% of the movies on Netflix are directed by women. Not even a full percent. It was shocking at first but then when I started to think about it, one percent is 1 in a hundred and their are A LOT of movies out there, and there have always been a lot of movies getting made, and there used to be even less female directors. Now, at least, there are some, but, when curious, I started looking up statitstics on female directors I was suprised by HOW LOW they are, still are.

For example, the highest grossing movie directed by a women is SHREK, but it was co-directed by a man. The nine next highest grossing movies by women are LOOK WHOS TALKING, WHAT WOMEN WANT, DR. DOLITTLE, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, DEEP IMPACT, WAYNE'S WORLD, ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS:THE SQUEAKUEL, BIG, and TWILIGHT. First of all, most of these movies are about men. I shudder to realize TWILIGHT has the biggest female role of them all, followed closely by SLEEPLESS, but I would be willing to bet Meg Ryan clocks in at under 50% of screen time in that one. I have not seen WHAT WOMEN WANT and it does have a large female cast, and it also stars every feminists favorite actor, Mel Gibson. I do love BIG, another Tom Hanks one, I owned it growing up and loved it. I didn't know WAYNE'S WORLD was directed by a women, that was interesting to learn. The rest are pretty awful, and not that popular.

Another dismal statistic is that only four women have been nominated for best director ever. Kathryn Bigelow was the first to win in 2010 for THE HURT LOCKER. Before her there had only been three women ever nominated in that category. Sofia Copolla in 2003 for LOST IN TRANSLATION, Jane Campion in 1993 for THE PIANO, and Lina Wertmuller in 1976 for SEVEN BEAUTIES. Their pictures get nominated a little more often, but they are hardly recognized in the director category. This past year two films directed by women were nominated for Best Picture, WINTER'S BONE and THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, but neither of their female directors were up for Best Director.

I do feel there are an increasing amount of female directed movies being made and coming out, but it is still so far behind and moving so slowly towards an equal distribution of male and female director it is frustrating. So, to cheer myself up I made a list of films I like that are directed by women and that many people might not have seen (or heard of). Also, all the films on this list are mainly about females as well.

MY NEW GUN (1992) 

Somehow I discovered this movie when I was about 13 years old and loved it. It was one that I liked the rent over and over, as we do at that age. I am not really sure what clicked about it for me, but it is the story of an unhappy suburban housewife who gets a gun from her yuppie husband even though she is terrified of them, then begins an affair with her mysterious neighbor who steals it from her.  It is a funny satire of suburban lifestyle similar to DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN at times, but more 90's. The director is Stacy Cochran who hasn't done much else. She directed the Winona Ryder film BOYS several years later (which is pretty uninteresting) and in 2000 she directed a film called DROP BACK TEN that I had never heard of before writing this blog. I will check it out and let you know if it is any good.

AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (1990)
This beautiful film, by Jane Campion, is slow and disturbing and is the story of  Janet Frame, a New Zealand author. Based on a three part autobiography the film is fascinating and restrained. Despite the rather extreme events that happened to Frame, Campion keeps the film focused on the quite strength of the lead character. The leading role is played by Kerry Fox who is wonderfully unique and odd. This might be my favorite Campion film, although I also love THE PIANO(1993) in so many ways. Also good is her most recent film BRIGHT STAR(2009) about poet John Keat's three year long romance with Fanny Brawne. Jane Campion's films are always beautiful, but ANGEL has a presence that is strong.

FAT GIRL (2001) 
One of the best films I have ever seen, I didn't enjoy watching this very much, but it was powerful and really affected me. The story is of 12 year old Anais, overweight and on summer vacation with her family. Elena is the pretty 15 year old sister of Anais, who gets all the boys, including an older Italian. Anair is a very unhappy girl, and her misery is long and drawn out, and she shares a room with her sister who has an incredibly akward sex scene with her older lover.  FAT GIRL has a shocking and disturbing ending that upset me enough to wonder if I even liked it at all? But upon reflection I feel it is an incredible film about adolescence and sibling rivalry. FAT GIRL also has some of the best acting from teenagers I have seen, it is like an artsy, French, KIDS. French director Catherine Breillat has made many films and they often are explorations of sexuality, often with young girls. Despite finding most of her films hard to connect with, many are interesting, and I appreciate films being made about female sexuality, disturbing or not, since they are told from a female perspective and it is subject matter that is often feared. Other Breillat films worth checking out to see a range of her style are A REAL YOUNG GIRL(1976), SEX IS COMEDY(2002) and THE LAST MISTRESS(2007).

WALKING AND TALKING (1996) 
This is a great film about two best friends, played by Catherine Keener and Anne Heche, who struggle to keep their tight friendship as one gets ready to marry a man who treats her great, while the other is at a bad place in her life with men and career. Keener is always great and she works with director Nicol Holofcener in all of her feature films, including the recent PLEASE GIVE(2010) This underrated movie has a great script and great 90's nostalgia. Both actresses are great making their characters seem like real women and very relatable. It is a film that is both funny and sad, showcasing a wonderful female friendship, not overshadowed with malice, like many female buddy movies.

WENDY AND LUCY (2008)
Michelle Williams is one of my favorite current actresses. WENDY AND LUCY  is a character piece that follows Wendy, traveling cross country with her dog, Lucy, to a new job. When the car breaks down, Wendy's poor finaciel state escelates her into very dire situations. Not a happy movie at all, it is a strong performance by both actress and director. Very straight forward and basic, the powerlessness of Wendy because she has no money sticks with you after you have seen it. Kelly Reichardt is the director, and one to watch for. I am eagerly waiting to see the film she made last year MEEKS CUTOFF (2010) also starring Williams. Reichardt makes film about people who become victim to their circumstance. Money, gender, passivity, are a common enemy of the characters in her films.